"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
06-26-2021, 09:01 PM (This post was last modified: 06-26-2021, 09:02 PM by Aela.)
With the last days of autumn starting to fade into winter, Aela knows that it is safe to return to the Pampas.
She can return to scheming and her dreaming. They can continue to keep building those plans that they had started. Has there been any further progress in Loess, she wonders? If they were lucky, they wouldn't have to deal with Sylva again for some time. That lot could contend with themselves, Aela considering them a cesspool of chaos (and the kind that could ruin her own auspicious plans).
But it leaves other places across Beqanna open. Her mind has considered figuring how to get the Tephran volcano to erupt. There are always the islands to consider as well. Islandres is quiet, she knows. But if it is quiet, she knows that it means there is likely nobody to upset there. An empty island does her plan little good. But what about the other? Ischia. It was supposedly home to nereids, rumored to be beautiful creatures. Lovelier than her?
The palomino rolls her slender shoulders and doubts it, but Aela decides it is worth investigating.
It takes her some time to reach it, realizing that the only way to travel there was by a sandbar. She had to wait a day, and time her arrival with the parting tide. When the low-lying pathway was revealed, the gold-striped mare had followed it towards a tropical paradise that Aela found (surprisingly) appealing. She almost hated to imagine all the ways that she could ruin it.
Turning her elegant face to the side, she spied a rather... unusual creature near her. "I'm looking for the Dame," Aela explains kindly, as if she was here on some kind of diplomatic mission. Her smile warms slightly as she studies his antennae and the multitude of legs that he had. Did he scuttle like the crabs she had seen on her way here or did he just struggle in a delightful twist of too many limbs?
That's the one he feels most often, pressing into his heart and his head when they come too close, and if he were someone else it might bother him more, but Enoch thinks they are right to be curious about him. They are right to wonder about the curl of his tail and although he's never felt it, he's sure they're jealous, too.
Even before she speaks, he feels her, and he feels the note of regret, too, though without any way to know its source, he can only assume that she mourns her unfortunate lack of legs. He returns her smile with one of his own, those fascinating antennae whisking back in a sweeping motion. He cannot quite catch the emotion beneath her words, but he distrusts her immediately.
He likes her immediately, too.
"You know," he says, copying the curious tilt of her pretty head, "I'm constantly amazed you four-leggers can stand, let alone walk. It's really more of a controlled fall for you, isn't it?"
He laughs and then six legs lift him from his sandy bed, carrying the young stallion closer the glowing chestnut with his customary confidence. His gait is smooth and rolling, effortless, but he leaves a respectful distance between them, bending his elegant neck so the difference in their heights is less obvious.
"The Dame is very busy, I'm sure she wouldn't mind if I took a message."
07-04-2021, 10:24 PM (This post was last modified: 07-04-2021, 10:26 PM by Aela.)
Aela has far too much practice with the wild and unfamiliar to let her expression slip. But as she stares at the multi-legged creature beside her, the palomino knows she hasn't seen another like him before. Her blue eyes look over the antennae, the extra appendages, and the odd exoskeleton that she has never encountered before. The curiosity fueling between them is an emotion easily detected and the golden mare gives an easier smile to the young dun stallion.
Her delicate ears prick forward and a dimple emerges as he tilts his head in a perfect copy of hers.
Adorable, really.
But there is nobody quite like Aela (or so she says) and the young Seneshecal holds her head at a sharper angle, finding a new perspective to take the Ischian in. "We certainly don't have the extra assurance that you have," the young mare tells her companion. Her lovely face lights up with genuine laughter as the armored brute rises on his multitude of legs. What would Obscene make of him, she wonders? How quickly could Skandar's gaze cut through his armor?
"I come from the Pampas," she tells him and continues to play with that curiosity mingling in the air between them, adding other inquisitive emotions to it like tinder to a flame.
Better to leave her name out of this, she decides. At least for now.
"Would she mind if we borrowed you for a bit?" Aela asks, as if she is giving the other equine a choice. (She isn't but this works so much easier without all the fuss and hassle of someone who struggles the entire way back to the Southern territory.) Her head shifts again, offering the pretty angle that he had seemed to enjoy mimicking. "We're looking for rather extraordinary individuals," which was the truth (apart from that loafer, Wherewolf) and then adds a compliment to see if that would make her newfound 'friend' more compliant. "And you seem to fit that description."
ooc: Aela is attempting to steal @Enoch for one BQ year to the Pampas
The Curiosity grows stronger with every word, a burning candle with an uncut wick, sputtering and flaring and smoking, and Enoch lets himself ride the wild bucking longer than he should, perhaps, because the strength of it is something new. Ischia as it is rarely lends itself to erratic emotions, with its warm sand, bright sun, blue water (and ghosts, he reminds himself, thinking of Maurtia and her friends, but they still don't speak to him no matter how hard he tries to feel them.)
The young stallion rides the rollercoaster that the golden Pampeian sets up for him, and when he is ready to get off, he derails it with a heavy dose of Indifference fed into the well. He does it almost without thinking, without realizing that she is the source of the feedback of emotion. He does it because there is so much family history with exactly this sort of game, like a genetic memory buried in his DNA that, once recovered, kicks into overdrive as if to make up for lost time.
"I am extraordinary," he agrees readily, the taste of Artifice on his tongue. (His? Hers?)
"But how will she get your message if we both go? No, I think it would be better if you stayed." The armored boy laces his words with Interest and Attachment. He cannot imagine why she thinks he is made for life among the flower beds.
The curiosity burning between them had been a warm thing; a sensation that didn't feel so different from the warm Ischian sun beaming down on them. It has taken her a few years to learn to detect unnatural emotion and it piques her interest as she takes another step closer to the six-legged creature with a walk as fluid and smooth as the waves behind them.
But then she laughs, brightening their conversation again. At least he didn't deny it. Aela has had her fill with those who pretend to be something they aren't. Better to realize and accept it and then move on, she thinks. Especially when there are far better things to do than wallowing in what you aren't.
"Oh, darling." Aela continues to the young stud in a soft tone and approaches him with a sultry swing in her step that has often swayed others to her way of thinking. "You don't want me to stay," she murmurs to her companion. Feeling the attachment and interest mingling between them, the palomino decides to add an emotion of her: attraction. Just enough that he might come closer and if she could get the chance, Aela would add another healthy helping of curiosity about the place that she had come from.
@Enoch why do i feel like we are playing empathic chess
